"The introduction is the first and best chance to win the attention of people who otherwise would not care." Martin Lloyd-Jones
Inspired by my effort yesterday with my difficult lucky dip, today I'm going to tackle my equally difficult first recipe. This is the book - a classic in the grandest sense of the word - by the author of one of my very favourite cookbooks, Provence the Beautiful Cookbook, which is perhaps at the other extreme in terms of appearance. In fact because I loved Provence the Beautiful so much I ordered this one on line because I kept on coming across it with glowing comments here, there and everywhere. It seemed like one of those books that anyone interested in food should have in their library.
It's a smallish paperback with hardly any illustrations other than some rather lovely drawings by the author himself. It was published way back in 1974 round about the same time as all those other long ago gurus when photographs of every dish in the book were definitely not the norm. This one is the frontispiece of the book - pots not food.
Like I said before, if you can do one artistic kind of thing well you can do them all. Well no it's even worse than that - if you can do anything really well you can probably do everything else well too.
Provence the Beautiful on the other hand is very large, and lavishly illustrated with extremely gorgeous photographs - some of them double-spreads, both of the scenery and the local vibe and also of the food. I have used it often, in fact am pondering on making his pissaladière for my next week's book group guests. It's vegan you see - well if you replace the anchovies with capsicum - and one of my friends is vegan.
I think that Olney himself lived in Provence for many years, and in his Preface begins by saying:
"The food in this book has been culled from all the corners of France, but I have done little to prevent the spirit from veering sharply toward the south. not only because the flavours of Provençal tend to be direct and uncomplicated, reflecting the sharp clarity of the light and the landscape, but also, ... the tables I share are Provençal, and perhaps most of all because a certain intimacy has bred an uneasy sense of the gentle dissipation of regional culinary traditions and the need to succour them."
This book and those of those other long ago gurus, can, in retrospect, be said to be responsible for the fact that these days if you visit almost any country now as a tourist you will find that the local traditional foods are now a tourist attraction in themselves. So all praise to them.
Their recipes as well are pretty wonderful on the whole and they certainly played a huge part in teaching me to cook. However, are books like this, of any relevance to today's young cooks? Only if they are really, really keen I would suggest.
As an example, last night we had dinner with our younger son and family and dessert - a chocolate soufflé no less - was made by my fourteen year-old granddaughter. She found the recipe online - probably on her phone and sent me the link this morning. She didn't decorate them but they were pretty much perfectly made. Now her mother is an excellent cook with a fairly large library of excellent cookbooks, but Zoe went straight to the net. And increasingly this is what is going to happen. Or perhaps there will be a variety of sources that we shall be able to access. The first recipe concept will be redundant. Or maybe not. Maybe we shall still like to sit and browse through a beautifully presented cookbook for inspiration.
I have been battling with the first recipe concept as represented in this book, not only because the actual first recipe is one I have talked about before - Crudités - which he describes as a large and colourful still life - but also because of the fairly lengthy introduction - or preface as he calls it.
Not that the first part of the prefaces is uninterestingly factual. It is rather a few short essays - on Provence, simple food, menus, rules and improvisation. He writes well and has many interesting insights to offer. I have used some of them here and there in my various posts.
After this we sort of get down to business and the factual however, with herbs, wine, bread, how the book is organised and then what he calls miscellaneous thoughts on various ingredients and equipment.
I see that I have sort of implied that cooks no longer do this sort of thing and that we plunge right into the recipes. But this, of course, is not true. Today we range from virtually nothing - e.g the books of Donna Hay to lengthy treatises on ingredients, the science of cooking, history, politics, geography - whatever is the author's primary concern in that particular book.
Does it suck us in, or does it put you off? Well I guess that is entirely subjective and depends on what you are looking for in a cookbook, not that one is necessarily looking for the same thing in every cookbook. My granddaughter's approach to cooking however, tells me that these days the young especially are just looking for a recipe and are therefore more likely to look online.
I see that I have not really done a good job on this one, so I'll just leave you with the last two recipes in the book which are grouped together and are both traditional Candlemas treats. Candlemas is in February and is the day the church celebrates the presentation of the baby Jesus at the Temple in the Gospel of St. Luke. Crêpes are apparently the main Candlemas tradition all over France, and Richard Olney here presents some Chartreuse flavoured crêpes stuffed with figs, and baked with a Chartreuse flavoured syrup. No picture of course - the crêpes shown here are the the traditional Isère Chartreuse flavoured ones. The second Candlemas treat is from Marseilles - basically fairly plain sugary cookies but shaped like boats - Navettes de Chandeleur.
Here's hoping my next first recipe will be easier.
POSTSCRIPT
Having been inspired by a Coles recipe for Poutine in their last magazine, I find there is another one in the new edition - this time it's a fishy one - well chips so why not? - Tuna Mornay Poutine. Now is that a coincidence or a trend? Looks pretty tempting though - much better than the original and traditional gravy and cheese curds on chips. The tuna is obviously an addition, but the gravy has been replaced by the Mornay sauce, which I assume is cheesy, because in this instance it's out of a jar - tuna bake pasta sauce. The tuna is out of a tin and the chips are frozen as are the peas. The only fresh ingredient is spring onions. But then this is a recipe in their Speedy Recipes section and I guess it's entirely appropriate for what was originally fast junk food. Interesting.
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